Showing posts from category: Biographical
Belterra and the Demise of Henry Ford’s Brazilian Rubber ‘Empire’
By the 1930s it was apparent to all concerned that Fordlândia, Henry Ford‘s rubber plantation in the Amazon, had been a costly, massive underachiever. Ford however, to the unending frustration of his family, doggedly refused to pull the plug and walk away from the Amazon fiasco counting his losses. In 1934, instead of ditching the failing Fordlândia operation altogether, he retained it and at the same time poured a fresh pile of money and resources into a second Amazonian rubber plantation site.
Learning from failure The new rubber plantation, at Belterra, was better positioned geographically in relation to the main regional city of Santarém (just 40 km south of it). The plantation site selected this time was a more judicious choice, unlike the uneven ground of Fordlândia, the site comprised a flat topography, much better terrain for moving equipment around and for planting✱. The more favourable physical conditions at Belterra meant that Ford’s agrarian labourers were over a period of several years able to cultivate some 19 square miles of land for the planting of rubber trees (not a gigantic quantity by any reckoning, but a significant advance on the pitiful returns from Fordlândia) [‘Belterra, Pará’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
Improvements in local agronomy
The horticulturalists at Belterra were conscious of the need not to replicate the monoculture prevailing at Fordlândia – which had made the rubber plants vulnerable to infection. By planting hardwoods this time and employing new breeding methods which used local varieties, the planters were able to avoid the scourge of Fordlândia – the Amazon leaf disease. The downside of this method however was that it was very labour-intensive and expensive [ibid.].
Infrastructure, variety and man-management One of the clear lessons of Fordlândia was that living conditions for migrant workers in the camp were not conducive to creating a happy workforce. Again, as at Fordlândia, the migrant employees (based on the precedent of Ford’s American plant workers) were paid much higher than the going rate elsewhere in Brazil…but the company had learnt from the Fordlândia plantation that this was not enough of itself to get the desired worker performance. This time Ford’s managers delivered an enhanced town infrastructure…the drawing board for Belterra included three well-staffed hospitals (a critical area of shortage at Fordlândia) and three major (and two minor) schools◊. The sanitation system was much improved on the earlier settlement (arguably it was better than anywhere else in rural Brazil at that time). The street layouts were better planned and more uniform (straighter streets, more systematic street grid and more effort put into ‘greening’ the environment). The Belterra management gave workers more options for their leisure time – construction of football fields⍟ and playground equipment, movie and dance nights (exclusively folk dancing, another obsession of Henry Ford!). The upshot was to give the plantation town something akin to a suburban feel [‘Dearborn in the Jungle: Why Belterra Flourished Where Fordlandia Failed’, Past Forward: Activating the Henry Ford Archive of Innovation, (blog), www.thehenryford.com].
Whereas Fordlândia had catered exclusively for single men in its Brazilian work force, the Ford managers (eventually) adopted a more realistic, far-sighted policy, recruiting an increasing number of migrant families to the plantation…showing that Ford (or his management team) were serious about addressing the staff problem that had plagued Fordlândia, a high rate of turnover of the work force [ibid.].
Some relaxation of Ford’s tight reins Other efforts were made to appease the plantation’s migrant work force to make them more compliant with company target objectives. The imposition of American food on Brazilian work force, which had been the bane of (a large slice of) the dissension in Fordlândia, was lifted. The Brazilian tappers and labourers were allowed to retain their traditional, local eating habits. In addition, in a further relaxation of conditions, musical instruments (an integral part of the Brazilian lifestyle) were allowed in the camp [ibid.].
Ford’s American ‘civilising’ mission for the “undeveloped world” Despite a relaxing of some of the rules governing the running of Ford’s new industrial town in the Amazon, there were certain things Henry would not compromise on. Ford was always big on “moral education”…part of his rationale for getting into the Brazilian jungle was to fulfill a mission to realise a peculiarly idiosyncratic idea of his concerning “racial progress’. As Elizabeth Esch describes it, driving Ford was a patronising impulse to “proletarianise and civilise” the uneducated rubber tappers of Amazonia, to make them into “something better”※. In the carmaker’s eyes, melding the workforce into an more efficient unit went hand-in-hand with educating them.
Belterra school girls and boys in Ford’s uniforms, ca.1940 | THF56937 | by the Henry Ford (Flickr) 🔽
Midwest “old school” values School was compulsory at Belterra – for all! Adult workers had to attend night school classes. Schoolchildren were strictly schooled and imbued with discipline along American lines of education…all workers’ children were issued with uniforms (which made the boys look like boy scouts or cadets). Every school day started with the ceremonial raising of the US flag. Some observers have noted how Ford’s installing of rigid educational and moral discipline at Belterra mirrored his own value system…to whit, tantamount to a kind of sociological experiment to “Americanise Belterra youth” along the lines of a “Mid-western small town model” [‘Dearborn in the Jungle’, loc.cit.].
Global war, disruption and end-game Ford established a tyre manufacturing plant in Dearborn in 1937 which by 1940 had the capacity to build 5,000 tyres, unfortunately for Ford NOT ANY of the raw rubber was sourced by that time from the company’s Brazilian plants [Ford Richardson Bryan, Beyond the Model T: The Other Ventures of Henry Ford, (1997)].
🔽 Henry Ford tinkering (Photo source: The Ford UK Co)
The Amazonian rubber venture by 1941 nevertheless did seem to be making some headway, there was in excess of three-and-a-half million rubber tree planted (mostly at Belterra), which by the following year had yielded 750 tons of latex [ibid.]. The Ford Company was optimistic enough to announce that it expected to produce 30 to 40 million pounds of high quality rubber from the Amazon by 1950 [Esch, op.cit.]. One thing in its favour, as a consequence of the world war extending to the Pacific, was that British, Dutch and French Far Eastern rubber plantations were now in the hands of enemy Japan and no longer commercial entities.
Ultimately though the war rebounded on the Ford Company as on commerce generally with an increasing drain on the US economy for the war effort. The motor company’s finances were not in great shape during the war years…incredibly the increasingly ‘flaky’ Ford Senior had axed the global company’s Accounting Department! [G Grandin, Fordlândia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, (2010)]) . The domestic situation in Brazil was not helping Ford’s rubber plants…although powerful Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas had given approving nods in the public eye to the company’s presence in Brazil, labour law reforms in the country were not advantageous to Ford. The Brazilian government also restricted the export of lumber during the war. To exacerbate matters even more, the rubber plantations were hit with a return bout of the dreaded leaf blight infestation [Bryan, op.cit.].
Synthetic rubber – the future!
Ford’s son Edsel✜ and grandson Henry II had for several years been badgering the bewilderingly stubborn and by now ailing and declining industrialist to bring the wasteful Amazon fiasco to an end. What possibly clinched it in the end was a technological breakthrough, by 1945 synthetic rubber production was a superior and more economical method of getting latex than natural rubber. Moreover, with WWII now over, Britain and the other European powers had regained control of their lucrative Far Eastern rubber estates, and would once again provide the Ford rubber plants with very stiff competition [ibid.]. In December 1945 Ford finally sold the Fordlândia and Belterra plantations back to the Brazilian government, losing over US$20 million in the deal [‘Belterra, Pará’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. The dragged-out, ill-fated Amazon venture of Ford, which perpetually “had teetered between failure and farce” was over [Esch, op.cit.].
PostScript: Fordlândia and Belterra redux Belterra today is in much better nick than Fordlândia, this is largely because the Brazilian government has kept the Belterra plant operational, although it has never been particularly profitable. Fordlândia on the other hand bears many of the characteristic scars of a ghost town. When Companhia Ford Industrial Do Brasil ceased operations in 1945, the Americans cut and ran, leaving things pretty much as they were…pieces of equipment and machinery abandoned, left lying idle, to rot or to be stolen or to be vandalised (contemporary Fordlândia has been described as a “looters’ paradise”◘), furniture, door knobs and other fittings, whatever that was movable, was taken. Most of the original buildings though have survived✥, as well as the plantation sawmill, the generator and such industrial relics, left rusting in the jungle for the past 73 years.
The most striking physical industrial remnant at Fordlândia today is the Torre de água – the 50m-high Water Tower…it still stands, like a symbol of the lost town, and like most of the fixtures at Fordlândia, built in Ford’s Michigan and shipped to the Amazon. Greg Grandin describes its still erect form as a reminder of what it once personified, “a utilitarian beacon of modernity for Ford’s ‘civilising’ project” [Grandin, op.cit.].
__________________________________________________________
✱ botantist expert James R Weir, brought in to ‘troubleshoot’ the company ‘s dismal performance in trying to grow rubber at Fordlândia, came up with the idea of a second plantation in the Amazon (and then promptly left the project altogether!)
◊ named after Henry Ford’s three grandsons, Edsel, Benson and Henry
⍟ Ford had banned the playing of football (soccer) at Fordlândia
※ there was lots of talk at Dearborn about “taming savages” and more disturbingly, of pseudo-racial categories – creating a “Latin-Saxonian unity” that supersedes the ‘Indian’ and mestizo groupings, E Esch, ‘Whitened and Enlightened’: The Ford Motor Company and Racial Engineering in the Brazilian Amazon’, in OJ Dinius & A Vergara [Eds.], Company Towns in the Americas: Landscape, Power and Working Class Communities, (2011)
✜ Ford heir Edsel predeceased his father, dying in 1943
◘ Simon Romero, ‘Deep in Brazil’s Amazon, Exhibiting the Ruins of Ford’s Fantasyland’, New York Times, 20-Feb-2017, www.nytimes.com]
✥ but not the crumbled mess of the town hospital
Fordlândia: The Dearborn Carmaker’s Amazon Folly
Pioneering American industrialist Henry Ford built his first commercial automobile in 1901, and went on in the years following to revolutionise the motor vehicle industry with his eponymous Model T Ford and his innovative assembly line production techniques✲. With the advent of Fordism (a system involving modern technological machinery and standardised production in high volumes) Ford was paying his auto industry employees an (at the time) unprecedented $5 a day! However it came with very consequential strings (a dehumanisation of the workplace and the loss of workers’ individual autonomy).
By the 1920s Ford was pursuing a plan to harness the waters of the Tennessee River to power a proposed 75-mile long mega-city, which the car-maker proclaimed would be a “new Eden” in northwest Alabama. A concerted campaign by political opponents within the US however blocked Ford’s efforts to get the scheme off the ground ‘[‘Valley of Visions’, (Adam Bruns), Site Selection Magazine, May 2010, www.siteselection.com]. Vexated but undaunted, Ford turned to the remote Amazon jungle for his next big project.
The rubber market and “latex gold” Rubber was in high demand by car manufacturers like Ford and his American rivals General Motors and Chrysler. Rubber is the source of latex, which is vulcanised to create car tyres and for a range of other vehicle parts (eg, valves, gaskets, hoses, electrical wiring). The problem for Ford and other manufacturers was that the European colonial powers, France, the Netherlands and (especially) Britain, had an established monopoly on the production of rubber through their profitable South-East Asian colonies (Malaysia, the East Indies, Vietnam, Ceylon). Ford was particularly concerned that the British, spearheaded by its secretary for colonial affairs Winston Churchill, was intent on creating a rubber cartel to further monopolise the valuable product for the Europeans. The industrialist therefore was looking round for a cheaper way of sourcing rubber…he briefly considered planting rubber trees in the Florida Everglades but that didn’t turn out to be promising. His focus eventually fixed on Brazil and its vast Amazon Basin (see also the Footnotes).
Eyes on Brazil
From 6,000 km away in Ford’s Dearborn car ‘empire’ headquarters, the Amazon looked a logical location for a rubber plantation. It was after all the original (and therefore seemingly the natural) environment for producing latex, being the home of the plant Hevea brasiliensis, used to make the most elastic and purest form of latex!
Ford’s idealistic and ideological vision Clearly Henry Ford saw the long-term business advantages of securing a consistent supply of latex at the most favourable prices, but in his public pronouncements he let it be known that he viewed the Brazilian project as something grander than an attempt to corner a resource market – “a civilising mission” no less! Ford regularly couched his intervention in Amazonia in terms of it being an act of “benevolence to help that wonderful and fertile land” [‘Lost cities #10: Fordlandia – the failure of Henry Ford’s utopian city in the Amazon’, (Drew Reed), The Guardian, 19-Aug-2016, www.theguardian.com]. While some of the car manufacturer’s overblown utterances may have been an indulgence in PR, the Amazonian venture (and the fact that he persisted with it long, long past its use-by-date) suggests that the idea of Fordlândia represented something in his core that was deeply idealistic. Greg Grandin in his epic study of the Fordlândia experiment, has noted that despite the runaway success of his Detroit-based business empire, Ford had become increasingly disatisfied with modern American society and culture as he saw it, there was a whole catalogue of things that he abhorred…including war, unions, alcohol, cigarettes, cow’s milk(!), modern dance, Wall Street financiers, Jews, the creeping intervention of government into business and into American life as a whole [Fordlândia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, (2010)].
A blinkered idealism Ford saw in the challenge of carving a viable city out of the Brazilian wilderness, a potential antidote to all he disliked about his homeland – a way to recreate “a vision of Americana that was slipping out of his grasp at home” [ibid.]. Another driver in Ford’s Amazonian quest was the unflinching faith in his capacity to replicate the Dearborn business success elsewhere, including the Amazon jungle. This idealism led Ford, even when things went “pear-shaped” in Fordlândia “to deliberately reject the expert advice” and blindly cling to his peculiarly personal notion of trying “to turn the Amazon into the Midwest of his imagination” [ibid.]. Moreover, Grandin notes, that the greater the reverses of Henry’s rubber enterprises in the Amazon, the more the carmaker would describe his ‘mission’ in Brazil in idealistic terms – Fordlândia would, he stressed repeatedly, bring economic stability and increases in the standard of life to the impoverished people of the Brazilian interior; the new city would support 10,000 people, etc [ibid.].
Initially, the government and it seems, the Brazilian people in the main, welcomed Ford’s Amazonian industrial city. Brazilian officials, especially consul José de Lima, went to great pains to woo the American carmaker once his interest in the Amazon became known. Some Brazilian officials even heaped overly-lavish, religiously evocative praise on Ford , calling him the “Jesus Christ of Industry”, the “Moses of the Twentieth Century” and “the salvation of Brazil’s long-moribund rubber industry” [ibid.].
By the terms of the business deal, Ford would pay the Brazilian government about US$125,000 for 5,625 square miles of land and the company was to be exempt from taxes✣. Under the concessions Ford’s city was to be granted an autonomous bank, police force and schools, to many observers it was a violation of Brazilian sovereignty…”it was as if Ford had the right to run Forlândia as a separate state”. The sceptical Santarém (local) press mockingly referred to the Dearborn (Michigan) car manufacturer as “São Ford” (“St Ford”) [ibid.].
The blueprint for Fordlândia Ford poured a massive amount of resources into his (new) utopian ‘dream’ city. The plant was equipped with “state-of-the-art” processing facilities. No expense was spared on constructing the American village (known locally as Vila Americana) which was reserved for American management. It was equipped with a swimming pool, a golf course, tennis courts, a library, schools and a hospital. Not surprisingly, the de luxe conditions of the Americans’ village was in grotesque contrast with that of the Brazilian workers whose rudimentary houses lacked even running water [ibid.].
Setbacks and drawbacks The jungle site picked out for Ford’s prefabricated industry town was Aveiro on the River Tapajós, in the state of Pará. From the get-go in 1928 things did not go well! First off, clearing the dense jungle for the site was really hard (and dangerous) work✪…even with Ford’s promise to pay high wages to the locals, labour was in short supply. The project’s logistics provided another headache, the location’s communications and transportation had serious shortcomings, The location was hilly and there were no roads to Aveiro so movement was by boat up and down the river, and seasonal climatic conditions tended to impede access (also latter on hindering the cargo vessels trying to reach Fordlândia to load up the latex).
“Agri-ignorance” The task of planting rubber trees was thoroughly error-ridden. Ford’s managers used antiquated planting techniques, the team lacked basic knowledge of tropical agriculture. A fundamental flaw that proved critical was the company’s practice (ignoring the advice of Brazilian botanists) of planting the rubber trees too close to each other, this resulted in making the plantings susceptible to disease (enabling the destructive South American leaf blight to move easily from tree to tree) [ibid.].
Illness caused by the harsh tropical location wreaked havoc with the work force (especially the migrant workers but also affecting the American staff). Workers went down with various ailments (malaria, VD, yellow fever, beriberi, parasites, snake bites, etc) placing a strain on the already overwhelmed company health services [ibid.].
Subverting worker morale Ford imposed strict conditions of behaviour on the work force – in keeping with his personal puritanical code. A prohibition ban was imposed (to match the prevailing injunction on alcohol in the US at the time). In light of the severely harsh conditions they were working under, Ford’s “absolutely no tolerance” liquor policy was totally unrealistic⊡. Workers were forced to endure a regime of rigid conformity – regimentation of plantation life, adhering to strict standards of discipline and hygiene. And to make things even more onerous, Ford introduced the same, notorious heavy-handed yolk of enforcement he employed in the River Rouge automobile plant in Detroit. Ford’s “Big Brother” like Service Department men were employed to carry out highly intrusive spot searches on workers’ quarters to ensure compliance with the edicts.
Americanisation overkill
Ford insisted that the migrant workers at Fordlândia adhere to Americanised conditions of work and services which ignored the local realities and cultural norms. This meant everyone got American-style housing with metal roofs which were conductors of the already intense tropical heat (in preference to the more sensible natural thatch roofs they were used to in Brazil). Another “First World” error by Ford was to build workers’ houses close to the ground…the locals in the Amazon knew to build high up on stilts so that they didn’t get overrun with animals and insects! Ford was insistent on interfering with the Brazilians’ diets, workers were fed unfamiliar food like hamburgers, whole-wheat bread and unpolished rice, and they were encouraged to plant flowers and vegetables on their plots. The American managers, with scant regard for the workers, forced them to work in the middle of the day in full tropical sun. Inevitably, the migrant workers staged a revolt against the management practices, known as Quebra-Panelas (the “Breaking Pans”). They rioted in late 1930, protesting against Ford’s imposed conditions, and the Brazilian army had to intervene to restore order (with management making some concessions with regard to the food) [ibid.].
Erratic managerial direction Part of the problem with Fordlândia was with the management. They’re was a rapid turnover of managers in the first two years of the settlement. Ford’s often wrong-headed policies were not easy to implement, but some managers were not up to the task and others just couldn’t hack it in the extremely challenging and arduous Amazon and quit. Unsurprisingly, with mismanagement morale plummeted, the American staff increasingly engaged in wild parties and drunken revelry. It wasn’t until Scot Archibald Johnston was put in charge at the end of 1930 that progress started to be made at Fordlândia. Johnston was able to improve the infrastructure, enhance the lifestyles of employees’ – new entertainments and recreations – film and dance nights, gardening, football games (overturning Ford’s earlier ban) and more education options. Grandin feels that under Johnston’s management, the city “came closest to Ford’s original ideal”. But still the yields of latex didn’t come remotely close to the company’s anticipated returns.
With the lack of commercial success, the original Brazilian government enthusiasm for Ford’s project waned badly. Even from the start there had been critics of the done deal that was vague on many details and required Ford to use only 40 % of his land grant for the production of latex♉. Eventually, there was a loss of credibility for Fordlândia – with the situation showing little improvement, the Brazilian middle classes ultimately could not square Ford’s “self-promoted reputation for rectitude and efficiency” with the reality of the plantation’s dismal track record [ibid.]
FN 1: British ‘Bio-piracy’ The European monopoly on rubber had its origins in the unscrupulous actions of British botanist Henry Wickham who clandestinely pilfered Hevea seeds out of the Amazon in the late 19th century. These were propagated successfulyl in Asia✧, putting the three colonial powers in a frontline advantageous economic position in the trade. The sale of latex, especially to the US auto industry which needed rubber for the expansion of the burgeoning industry, helped Great Britain and France pay off its (WWI) war debts [Grandin, op.cit.].
FN 2: The “latex lords” Before the rise of the Asian rubber plantations, Brazil was the dominant world supplier…in the second half of the 19th century, processed rubber accounted for 40% of Brazil’s total exports. The Amazon’s big towns, Manaus and Belem, profited spectacularly from the rubber boom as witnessed by the magnificent BeauxArts palaces and grand neoclassical municipal buildings that sprang up. By the early 1920s however, the country’s rubber industry had bottomed out and Brazil was bankrupt [ibid.].
••••——••——•••——••——•••——••———••——•••——••——••——••——•••———••——••——•••• ✲ so successful that the Ford Motor Company had captured over half the US auto sales market by 1921 ✧ rubber cultivation thrived in South-east Asia due to a combination of factors – the parasites (insects and fungi) that feed off the rubber in Brazil were not present; the cross-breeding of trees led to increased yields of sap. The plantations were close to ports (cf. Brazil), reducing the transportation costs. Lastly, the cost of labour (principally derived from China) was significantly lower [Grandin, op.cit.]
✣ as it transpired, the deal was not as great as the Detroit carmaker thought …”swindled by a Brazilian con artist” Ford paid around three-times the value of the land [G Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, The United States and the Rise of the New Imperialism, (2005)]
✪ a hardship compounded by the company providing the clearers with very poor housing conditions ⊡ and impossible to fully enforce…plantation workers got round the prohibitions (Ford’s ‘puritanism’ extended to bans on women in the town, on smoking and on the playing of football as well) by establishing illicit bars, nightclubs and brothels on the so-called “Island of innocence”, [‘Fordlândia’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org] ♉ leading some Brazilians to speculate that Ford’s real motives for intervening were to seek oil, gold and political leverage [Grandin, op.cit.].
Iceland’s “Dog-Days King”: The Nine Week Summer Republic
In the middle of the Napoleonic Wars with conflict raging in different parts of the Continent, attention switched momentarily to the North Atlantic. In 1807 the United Kingdom attacked Copenhagen, capturing or neutralising virtually the entire Danish navy. The Danish response was to join the European conflict on Napoleon’s side against Britain and its allies.
Iceland at this time was a sovereign territory under the realm of the Danish-Norwegian real union. During the hostilities, in 1809, a British trading expedition to Iceland was mounted by London soap merchant Samuel Phelps. Accompanying Phelps on this mission was a Danish adventurer with a dodgy past, Jørgen Jørgenson whose escapades in Iceland and elsewhere were to make him one the most colourful characters of the era.
Jørgenson’s coup
Despite Iceland’s citizens suffering from a shortage of provisions, the governor of the colony rebuffed Phelps’ request to trade with the locals. At this point, Phelps and especially Jørgenson, took things into their own hands. The Dane had the governor (Count FC Trampe) apprehended and his administration deposed in a “bloodless coup”. Jørgenson immediately declared Iceland a republic, free and independent of Danish-Norwegian rule.
Jørgenson’s “reform agenda” for Iceland✱ Unhesitatingly Jørgenson assumed the top spot in the new regime, adopting the title of “His Excellency, the Protector of Iceland, Commander in Chief by Sea and Land” [James Dally, ‘Jorgenson, Jorgen (1780–1841)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/jorgenson-jorgen-2282/text2935, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 1 January 2019].
The ‘protector’ set about designing a flag (above) for the ‘republic’ and built a fort which he named Fort Phelps after the merchant who financed the expedition. Jörgenson announced a series of reforms, pledging to lower taxes on the citizenry, establish price controls on grain, and to restore the Althing (Iceland’s historic parliament dating back to AD 930) [Historical Dictionary of Iceland, (Sverrir Jakobsson & Gudamundar Hálfdanarson) [1st Ed.]]. Jørgenson’s proclamations that he was acting on behalf of Icelanders to liberate them from colonial servitude have a question mark over them…in his autobiography Jørgenson hints at the fact that he had been motivated more by personal gain and glory than by any altruistic aims [‘The Convict King’ by Jørgen Jørgenson (edited by James Francis Hogan)].
The “nine week republic” The English were not in favour of Jørgenson’s bold unilateral coup, the influential Sir Joseph Banks for instance decried the takeover by Jørgenson as illegal – although its interesting to note that Banks had already urged Westminster to annex Iceland (as well as Greenland and the Faroe Islands) and turn the North Atlantic into a “British lake” [Jørgen Jørgenson’s Liberation of Icelandic – A Bicentenary’, Tasmanian Times, (Kim Peart), 31-May-2009, www.tasmaniantimes.com]. Just nine weeks after the deposition of Danish rule on the island, the HMS Talbot under Captain Alexander Jones was despatched to the capital Reikevig (Reykjavík) to take the Danish “mini-Napoleon” into custody and restore Danmark-Norge rule.
Jørgenson was taken back to London (apparently voluntarily) where was imprisoned for breaching his parole which had forbidden him from leaving England without permission. After the defeat of Denmark-Norway’s ally France in 1814, Norway was ceded to Sweden and Iceland ceded to Denmark (Treaty of Kiel). It was the not until 1944 that Iceland finally obtained full independence from the Danes and became, this time permanently, a republic.
⟰ Engraving commemorating Jørgenson on the Ross Bridge, Tasmania
PostScript: Jørgen Jørgenson, opportunist adventurer Jørgenson’s eventful life, both before and after his brief Icelandic escapade, was a entertaining cavalcade of alternating peaks and troughs. His autobiography makes the case for Jørgenson as “man of many parts”: “Being the Life and Adventures of Jörgen Jörgensen, Monarch of Iceland, Naval Captain, Revolutionist, British Diplomatic Agent, Author, Dramatist, Preacher, Political Prisoner, Gambler, Hospital Dispenser, Continental Traveller, Explorer, Editor, Expatriated Exile, and Colonial Constable.“ [Hogan, op.cit.]. Among other things, Jørgenson had two lengthy spells in Van Diemens Land (Tasmania), involved in the early exploration of that island✥; had a number of mandatory stays at “His Majesty’s Pleasure” (the Fleet Prison, Newmarket); was for a time a spy FOR the British; and in between adventures he wasted an inordinate amount of time engaged in nonstop gambling and drinking.
☤☤ ☤ ☤ ☤☤
Note: Icelanders today refer to Jørgenson as Jörundur hundadaga-Konyngur (“Jørgen the Dog-Days King”) (Icelanders tend to characterise summer as the “dog-days”).
☤☤ ☤ ☤ ☤☤ _____________________________________________ ✱ Jørgenson had called for the creation of a liberal constitution based on that of the United States and the French First Republic ✥ ‘Vandemonians’ have heaped on Jørgenson some of his more romanticised sobriquets, such as the “Founder of the City of Hobart Town” and the “Viking of Van Diemens Land”
Robinson Crusoe, the Making of a Universal and Versatile Myth
Robinson Crusoe Tercentenary, 1719-2019
Three hundred years ago this coming April, London merchant-cum-journalist Daniel Defoe published his debut novel anonymously✱ – it was to become one of the most iconic and most imitated literary works ever…it began with a title page descriptor that read in full:
The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates.
Once “cast on Shore by Shipwreck”, Crusoe, isolated and alone, is forced to make the best of a perilous predicament in an alien and challenging environment. His solitary, epic struggle in the face of hardships and the existence of threats from wild animals and the unknown elevates the story to mythic proportions. The myth is complete when Crusoe ultimately succeeds in conquering all impediments and fashions the island into his own “miniature Great Britain”.
A multiplicity and diversity of readings Robinson Crusoe is a multifaceted work of fiction, viewable from a number of different perspectives. On a straightforward level its an adventure novel and a travel book (rather than a guide) tantalising the 18th century Englishman and woman with a sense of faraway “new worlds” which were still undergoing a process of discovery and exploration.
The personality of the protagonist Crusoe himself is an Everyman figure, representing a cross-spectrum of contemporary English societal types – above all he is the archetypical survivor prompting untold numbers of readers to identify with the despair of his plight and “embraced his myth of struggle, survival and triumph against all odds” [Crusoe: Daniel Defoe, Robert Knox and the Creation of a Myth, Frank, K (2011)].
⍐ One of the numerous screen adaptations of the ‘Robinson Crusoe’ tale
Crusoe as “economic-imperialist” and coloniser There is the hero of romantic, bourgeois individualism, the Englishman who turns his dire circumstance to his ultimate financial advantage. When others appear on the island (Friday, the boy slave Xury, the ‘savages’, the Spanish sailors and English mutineers), Crusoe reacts with a sensibility typical of the “natural superiority” of a coloniser and uses the others as ‘commodities’✥. James Joyce described Robinson Crusoe as the “true symbol of the British conquest”, embodying “the whole Anglo-Saxon spirit” [quoted in ‘An introduction to Robinson Crusoe’, (Stephen Sharkey), 21-Jun-2018, www.bl.uk].
A spiritual voyage On another level Robinson Crusoe can be read as a kind of spiritual autobiography (popular in Defoe’s time). Crusoe’s journey from one exotic land to another can be seen as the “spiritual voyage” of Bunyanesque Puritan Christianity. Crusoe’s long, long sojourn on the island is a test of his faith. Being alone with infinite time on his hands he devotes himself to intense self-scrutiny, questioning the Providence that landed him in his predicament (ie, his relationship with God). Some critics have noted that Crusoe’s thought processes on the island entailed a progression from rebellion, acknowledgement of mortal sin, atonement and religious conversion [‘Robinson Crusoe Theme of Religion’, (shmoop), www.shmoop.com].
DIY Robinson Crusoe and the Conduct book Defoe provides a very detailed description of how his hero goes about making the most of his enforced stay on the island. As Katherine Frank observes, DeFoe’s novel is the “ultimate how to book: a step-by-step guide on how to live in a particular tricky situation”, ie, a method for surviving alone on a desert island◘ [Frank, op.cit.]. On the ship and again on the island Robinson spends copious amounts of time cataloguing items and making lists of everything that comes into his head.
The novel’s preoccupation with DIY touches on something else close to Defoe’s heart, the “Conduct book”✪ (a kind of user’s guide for life in the 18th century). The self-help component in Robinson Crusoe gives a sample of the writer’s broader interest in instructional works…Defoe spilled a lot of ink in writing a series of published texts telling people how they should live their lives – with titles like The Family Instructor, The Compleat English Tradesman and The Compleat English Gentleman.
A Defoe conduct book on the Robinson Crusoe theme
Always look on the bright side of life
Defoe’s faith in the individual’s capacity for self-improvement comes through in his novels as much as in the didactic Conduct books. In Robinson Crusoe Defoe’s central character refuses to give up and submit to his fate no matter how glum his prospects look. With each new challenge he faces on the island, Crusoe time and again evokes the “power of positive thinking”…in his solitude he learns “to look more upon the bright Side of my Condition and less upon the dark Side” (Defoe imbues the protagonists of his later novels like Moll Flanders with this same positive disposition) [ibid.]. Defoe really had to be a glass half-full kind of guy to keep bouncing back from all the reversals life was lobbing on him (viz. a succession of self-inflicted, calamitous business ventures he managed to embroil himself in, doing gaol time for failure to pay his debts, etc).
PostScript: Cashing in on the “golden egg” The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was an instant commercial success with four editions printed in 1719. Defoe, always with his mind fixated on how to enrich himself, was quick to follow-up Robinson Crusoe with a sequel. The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, published in the same year, proved to be almost as much a hit with the public. The Farther Adventures (usually today called the Further Adventures) was intended to be Robinson Crusoe’s swan-song, but Defoe couldn’t resist going to the well one time too many with a third book in 1720 entitled Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With his Vision of the Angelick. Serious Reflections ‘bombed’ badly and the less said about it the better⊡. ═══════════════════════════════―═══════════════════════════════ ✱ it was commonplace for 18th century texts to be published either anonymously or using a pseudonym…Defoe was especially inclined to obscure textual ownership to try to cover himself when raising polemical questions [‘Anonymity in the Eighteenth Century’, (Gillian Paku), (Literature, Literary Studies – 1701 to 1800: Aug 2015 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935338.013.37 www.oxfordhandbooks.com] ✥ Crusoe’s mercenary nature (equating with that of the money-obsessed Defoe) is best illustrated with Xury who Crusoe is happy to sell back into slavery when he is no longer required and by so doing fetch a tidy sum for himself ◘ novelist EM Forster once remarked that Robinson Crusoe reminded him of a “Boy Scout manual” ✪ Conduct books, today’s self-help guides, in Defoe’s day took the form of sermons, devotional writings, familiar letters, chapbooks and instruction manuals offering advice on social mores and manners, spiritual guidance and practical information on state and household duties, [Batchelor, Jennie. “Conduct Book”. The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 July 2004 https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=216, accessed 29 December 2018.] ⊡ the Farther Adventures had the same trademark derivative framework as the original novel – Defoe borrowed heavily once again from Robert Knox’s autobiography and seems to have modelled the last part of Crusoe’s journey on a 17th century Moscow Embassy secretary’s travel journal (Moscow – Peking), The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; Frank, op.cit.]
John Lewis, Senior and Junior: A Contrast in Pathways Up the Retailing Ladder
The path taken by John Lewis in scaling the heights of retail commerce was typical of many embryonic and aspiring owner-drapers in mid-Victorian Britain. Somerset born and raised, Lewis started his first modest shop in Nº132 (later re-numbered) Oxford Street, London, in 1864 (taking the sum of 16s & 4d on opening day). His first twenty years in business for himself were far from glamorous, a period dominated by hard and dreary ‘yakka’ and slow piecemeal accumulation and consolidation.
The tortoise approach – slow and steady
Lewis took a conservative, uncomplicated (“keep it simple”) approach to retailing and only slowly moved his lines from silks, woollens and cotton fabrics to dress fabrics and clothing and later to furnishing fabrics and household supplies like China and ironmongery (but never food!). His philosophy was sell cheap and no ads (for nearly a century the John Lewis company continued a practice of minimal advertising!)✱. Unsurprisingly for a man described as “a Victorian curmudgeon” [‘John Lewis (1836-1928)’, Geoffrey Tweedale, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 06-Jan-2011, www.oxfordnb.com], his management style was rigidly autocratic, he often had abysmally poor relations with his staff and was prone to effecting arbitrary and sometimes wholesale dismissals. In 1920 Lewis’ “pig-headedness” and anti-union stance triggered deleterious industrial conflict…in 1920 the unaddressed grievances of Lewis’ shop-girls led to a strike by 400 staff. Lewis simply sacked the strikers and replaced them, but his arbitrary action brought him discredit and caused commercial ruptures adversely affected the company’s competitiveness vis-à-vis its retailing rivals in the long-term. ‘How John Lewis was the original store wars: As the retail empire celebrates 150 years, we tell its fascinating story’, (Brian Viner), The Daily Mail (UK),, 04-Jul-2014, www.dailymail.co.uk]
ef=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/image-1.jpg”> Flagship store 1939 (Source: John Lewis Memory)[/cap
http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/image-2.jpg”> Peter Jones[/caption
Father v son Lewis’s innate caution also showed itself in his hesitancy in passing even a portion of control of the firm over to his sons, especially his eldest son John Spedan Lewis. When Lewis’s sons came of age, he gave them a limited role only…Spedan (as he was universally called) was put in charge of the newly acquired Peter Jones store (presumably to keep him from interfering with the central operation of the business). Spedan increasingly clashed with Lewis Senior over their fundamentally different approaches to business, with Spedan in charge of Peter Jones and JL Senior holding sway in Oxford Street HQs, relations between father and son deteriorated alarmingly (characterised in some quarters as equating to intra-family “store wars”) [Viner, loc.cit].
After the founder’s death in 1928 Spedan was free to fully implement his more progressive management ideas – in the area of staff relations these were often light years away from his father’s outmoded views and intransigent bellicosity…once at the helm Lewis Junior started by cutting working hours and introduced tea-breaks for the staff…Spedan envisaged further, more radical, plans for modernising ‘John Lewis’ and propelling it forward in the Thirties.
Under Spedan’s watch – JLP up and away!
Spedan wasted no time in taking ‘John Lewis’ in a very different direction to his late father’s ultra-cautious, steady-as-it-goes approach. In 1929 he reformed the enterprise into a public limited company, John Lewis Partners (JLP). Staff were rebranded ‘partners’ and made shareholders in the firm. Spedan diversified and pursued an expansionary route that Lewis Senior had so long doggedly eschewed. Smaller, less profitable chains were acquired – from 1933 on Spedan widened the John Lewis Partnership dramatically, adding purchased stores for the first time outside of London – Nottingham, Weston Super-Mare, Portsmouth and Tyrrel, Southampton, etc. [‘The 1930’s; a period of growth’, (Johnathan Blanchford), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk]. One of JL Junior’s ideas was to create a chain of John Lewis hotels, and to supply these hotels he bought a chain of grocery shops, known as Waitrose, in the Thirties. Waitrose proved a spectacularly profitable acquisition for John Lewis’⊛. As of 2016 there were some 353 Waitrose supermarkets across the UK, collectively worth more than £1B (one of only five such successful food and drink brands in Britain) [‘Waitrose’, Wikipedia]http://en.m.wikipedia.org.
In the Forties John S Lewis bought up some of the failing Selfridge business concerns after the former high-flying company plummeted and Harry Selfridge was forced out to pasture and into retirement. Other (overseas) business moves into South African draperies however turned out to be unsuccessful ventures [‘John Lewis’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
▼ Spedan Lewis
Although Spedan was less autocratic, and certainly less confrontational✣, than his father, he was no democrat when it came to running the John Lewis business empire. Some observers (including insiders), recognising an inherited family trait, saw Lewis Junior as a “my way or the highway” type of business leader. Recollections of some ex-staff and associates point at a Spedan inclination to public losses of temper and the arbitrary and unfair treatment of staff on occasions, with a suggestion of a peculiar bias against staff (including managers) with ginger hair [‘Memories of Spedan – not all sweetness and light’, (Margaret Cole), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk].
Today JLP remains an employee-owned British company (consistent with the “worker-cooperative” entity (the ‘Partnership’) as initiated by Spedan Lewis in 1929). According to the Sunday Times it is the third largest private UK company by sales – £3.78B revenue in 2017 [“The Sunday Times HSBC Top Track 100 league” (2016)]. As a retail operator JLP maintain its traditional market position as a chain of high-end✫ department stores⊡, competing with its historic, equally upscale rivals in the merchandising field, Harrods and Selfridges.
FN: the corporate colours of retailing John Lewis’s store colours have traditionally been green and white – supposedly because Spedan Lewis wrote his memos exclusively in green ink (the auditor’s colour!) on white paper [Tweedale, loc.cit.]. Interestingly, green seems to be the preferred colour of successful London-based retailers…Selfridges’ salient business colour is also green, and both Harrod’s and Marks and Spencer’s traditional hues are green and gold.
2013: John Lewis presence in Westfield’s Shepherds Bush mall ∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸
✱ the John Lewis motto (dating from 1925) characteristically is “never knowingly undersold”
✧ the sale was the stuff of legend in London retailing – Lewis reportedly walked the distance from Oxford Street to the Sloane Square, Chelsea, Jones premises, with bank notes in his pocket to the value of £20,000 to complete the purchase in person. Today, Peter Jones is the ‘posher’ sibling of the John Lewis store
⊛ Waitrose is an upmarket grocer in line with the general emphasis of John Lewis merchandising
✣ JL Senior’s quarrelsome, confrontational nature was often fraught with consequences – a protracted turn-of-the-century legal dispute with Lord Howard, Baron de Walden, saw Lewis being sentenced to three weeks in gaol in 1903 for contempt of court [‘How John Lewis ended up in prison. A new century same old Mr Lewis’, (J Blanchford), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk]
✫ a monumental departure from the early days of JL Senior’s “sell cheap” strategy
⊡ currently around 30 JL stores in England, Scotland and Wales and concessions in the Republic of Ireland and Australia
The Selfridges Story: The Making and Unmaking of Harry (or Several Lessons in Cultivating Customer Satisfaction)
“People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.” ~ HG Selfridge
⊹⊹⊹ ⊹⊹⊹ ⊹⊹⊹
Before I ever visited the UK I wasn’t at all familiar with Selfridges. I knew about Knightsbridge and Harrods and its preciously preserved pedigree all right…we’ve done that! My first time in London I was on a bus travelling (make that crawling) down Oxford Street heading towards the West End when I was enlightened as to the existence of the second-best known upmarket London department store. As the bus idled stationary I spotted a sign in front of a building that said ‘Selfridges’, my first thought, I remember, was “strange name!”…but when I think about it now I vaguely recall that I had previously heard the name Selfridges, but without inquiring further at the time I sort of formed the literal impression that it was a store as the name sounded that “sold fridges”, ie, a purveyor of domestic white goods! So when I did eventually get my beak inside the store’s doors at 400 Oxford Street I was surprised to see lines and lines of (pricey) fashion wear, shoes, accessories, skin care products, bags and more – but not one refrigerator in sight! (in its time it has apparently sold most everything!)
Even without visiting Selfridges’ flagship Oxford Street store, you may well be aware of it or of its US-born founder Harry Gordon Selfridge thanks to the recent ITV television series Mr Selfridge (first aired in 2013). The series was a period drama about the flamboyant, visionary retailer and the interactions that take place around him in his eponymous London department store✱.
A Marshall Field blueprint for London
Wisconsin-born Harry Gordon Selfridge initially earned his business ‘spurs’ working for Chicago department store Marshall Field & Company (right), this segued into him purchasing his own department store in Chicago. In hardly any time at all the mercurial Selfridge abruptly re-sold the business, making a quick profit and retired to play golf. In 1906 while holidaying in London, Selfridge sensed a new retail opening for his entrepreneurial talents in the British capital. For £400,000 he purchased land and surrounds for a novel custom-built, mega-department store in the then unfashionable, western end of Oxford Street [‘Harry Gordon Selfridge’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
“The American Invasion of London”
The London press was not initially warm to the notion of the American’s incursion into the world of London commerce. The City’s daily and drapery trade press described it as an “American Invasion of London” [Lawrence]. Selfridge’s loud in tone and bombastic approach to selling the project didn’t help in endearing him to the newspapers (described in some publications as being “aggressively big in scale”). Selfridge’s efforts to make the store a reality were driven by an unwavering vision: creating a “monumental retail emporium” was in his eyes the key to elevating “the business of a merchant to the Dignity of Science” (as he grandiosely put it). Selfridge believed to achieve that, he had to construct a gigantic “technologically advanced department store”, hence the massive amount of money, time and effort he put into the project [LAWRENCE, J. (1990). ‘Steel Frame Architecture versus the London Building Regulations: Selfridges, the Ritz, and American Technology’. Construction History, 6, 23-46. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41613676].
A ground-breaking, landmark modern steel-framed building
Construction of the Selfridge store was something of an architectural coup in itself. It won praise in its day from British building journals for its innovative construction methods…built with steel frames and reinforced concrete allowing for much narrower than usual walls, the frames permitted a far greater window area, so very large plate-glass windows could be installed (12 of which were the largest sheets of plate-glass then in the world!) – making for much more interior natural light and brightness (designed by famed US architect Daniel Burnham and associates). Originally comprising a 250′ x 175′ site, Selfridge’s had nine Otis passenger and two service lifts and six staircases. 100 separate departments were spread out over eight floors. While the physical construction of the Oxford Street store took only 12 months, Selfridge had first to overcome London City Council’s raft of objections (unprecedented size of the commercial structure, fire danger, etc). Selfridge and his engineers’ lobbying of the LCC Committee eventually resulted in the passing of two local building acts – LCC (General Powers) Acts of 1908 and 1909 – necessary for the Oxford Street project to be completed [Lawrence, ibid.]☯.
Rigid building regulations weren’t Selfridge’s only impediment to making his dream store a reality. Half-way through the project funding became a pressing issue when his partner and main backer Sam Waring, frustrated by Harry’s “grandiose and reckless approach” to the venture (Selfridge had grievously underestimated the complications of the project), withdrew his financial backing. The economic downturn in London (and in the US) at the time made alternative sources of funding a very grim prospect, and disaster was only narrowly avoided when a new backer, millionaire tea tycoon John Musker stepped in to rescue Selfridge [Gayle Soucek, Mr Selfridge in Chicago: Marshall Field’s, the Windy City and the Making of a Merchant Prince, (2015)]. After the big opening Selfridge remembered to make sure the store’s product lines included everything to do with tea-making (teapots, cups and saucers, sugar bowls, etc) [‘Selfridges: 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about the department store’, (History Extra), www.historyextra.com].
Selfridge, customer-centred strategies ahead of the curve
Harry’s approach to retailing was characteristically innovative on many fronts. Selfridge placed tremendous faith in advertising, the 1909 campaign leading up to the store’s opening cost a reported $500,000 in 1909 money [‘Selfridge Dies: Ripon Lad Who Jolted Empire’, The Milwaukee Sentinel, 9-May-1947 (online fiche)] (Britain’s biggest ever ad bill to that point) and he used it imaginatively together with ingenious publicity campaigns. Selfridge was the first retailer to make popular the idea of “shopping for pleasure”, rather than it being solely a functional task undertaken for necessity (as people conceived of it prior to Harry’s advent). In-store activities and arrangements often were original and novel (eg, displaying the monoplane used by aviator Louis Blériot in the first cross-English Channel flight at Selfridge’s (1909)✜). Another interest-generating feature in the store was Logie Baird’s television prototype shown on display in 1925.
Those specially designed wide windows were put to optimal use, Selfridge was the first to utilise window dressing where he could show off the latest fashions and utensils in open display [‘Selfridges 7 things’, loc.cit.]. The staff at Selfridge’s Oxford Street store (initially comprising 1,400 employees) were instructed to assist customers in their purchases, not to pester or use any “hard-sell” tactics on them⊟. Harry’s philosophy was “first get them in, then to keep them there. Thereafter they would buy” (Woodhead). One of Selfridge’s more forward-thinking moves was to locate the goods where they were visible and accessible to customers all around the store’s interior (a practice he devised while at Marshall Field’s in Chicago), rather than hiding them away from sight under counters (as had been the practice in most retail stores hitherto). He also introduced the concept of the “bargain basement” to retailing, a section where shoppers could find regularly discounted commodities [‘Innovation Lessons From The World’s First Customer Experience Pioneer — Infograph’, (Blake Morgan), Forbes Magazine, 26-Jun-2017, www.forbes.com ; Lindy Woodhead, Shopping, Seduction & Mr Selfridge, (2012)].
A visceral, holistic experience
Selfridge’s vision was to make the department store more than just a shop where you went to buy goods, he continued to introduce new features to Selfridges…elegant (moderately priced) restaurants, a library, reading and writing rooms and special reception rooms for French, American and ‘Colonial’ clientele. There were cookery demonstrations in the kitchenware section. All this marked a radical departure from the practices of other department stores which employed floorwalkers to ‘shoo’ people out of the store who were just hanging around and not actively engaged in buying an item! Even the store’s roof was put to productive if curious usage (a shooting range for an all-girl gun club as well as an ice rink✧) [Lawrence, loc.cit.].
The female shopper as an identified demographic
Selfridge saw the role of the department store in macrocosmic terms – “the store should be a social centre, not merely a place for shopping”. Unlike the conservative establishment of the day and much of the mainstream, Selfridge endorsed the Suffragette Movement…the new store was (in part) “dedicated to woman’s service”. In a 1913 advertisement Selfridge described the store thus: Selfridge and Co: The Modern Woman’s Club-Store” [‘Suffrage Stories/Campaigning for the Vote: Selfridge’s and Suffragettes’, Woman and her Sphere, (Elizabeth Crawford), 16-May-2013, www.womanandhersphere.com; ‘Selfridge Lovers: The Secret behind our house’, www.selfridge.com]. Astute businessman that he was, Harry popularised shopping as a leisure activity specifically for women…to make it a more welcoming and conducive place for them to spend time (and money!), he displayed freshly scented floral arrangements and had open vistas in the store, he employed musicians to perform and added beauty and hair salons (Paris-inspired) and art galleries. And he introduced public restrooms for women to the store (the first time ever done!)❅
[Forbes, loc.cit.].
The H.G.S. leadership style
As retail magnate go, Selfridge went against the grain for his day by not being an authoritarian business leader. He was temperamentally inclined towards fairness with regard to remuneration, increasing the wages of his staff, elevating them above “wage slavery”, treating them as employees as opposed to ‘servants’ (cf. Harrods) [ibid.]…not to overstate it, Selfridges shop floor staff were still exposed to long, long hours of drudgery but they were paid a livable wage for their arduous labours. A sample of the quotes attributed to Selfridge reflect his anti-dictatorship approach to business and interpersonal relations: “The boss drives his men, the leader coaches them” ; “The boss depends on authority, the leader on good will” ; “The boss says ‘I’, the leader says ‘We'” ; “The boss inspires fear, the leader inspires enthusiasm” ; “The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown, the leader fixes the breakdown” ; etc.✥ [‘Harry Gordon Selfridge’, Wikipedia, op.cit.]
Tower folly Selfridge’s thrived, prospered and grew after the Great War (the store size doubled). Things didn’t always go the Wisconsin-born retail magnate’s way however…a couple of commercial reversals suffered by Harry during the decade concerned his plans for erecting a massive tower from the building which was rejected by the LCC Committee because of excessive height, and possibly also because it would have vied with the iconic St Paul’s Cathedral for attention (a fortunate outcome perhaps as the model drawings for the tower suggest the result would have been an incongruous coupling of architectural forms and a hideous eyesore!) [Lawrence, op.cit.]. The other setback was Selfridge’s proposal for a tunnel between the store and the nearest tube station, Bond Street, the plan ultimately got kiboshed!
Harry on the downslide By the late Twenties Selfridge & Co was at the top of its game, the name was synonym with quality merchandise and Selfridge took its place as a stellar institution on the London commercial scene. Some time after the onset of the Great Depression things started to turn badly pear-shaped for Selfridge, as for businessmen as a whole. Harry Selfridge contributed to his own decline however by persisting in his flamboyantly extravagant spending. He squandered money on his womanising ways for which he earned a certain notoriety, for instance, $4M was wasted on his dalliances and affairs such as with the Dolly Sisters (Hungarian jazz dancers) – a part of his story that the TV series was quick to focus on) [Forbes, loc.cit.. By 1940 the company owed £250,000 in taxes and Selfridge was deep in debt to the bank, forcing him to sell out and retire from the business (retaining a modest annual consultancy stipend) [‘Harry Gordon Selfridge’, Wikipedia, op.cit.; Milwaukee Sentinel, op.cit]
Selfridges’ Birmingham Bullring store ▼
Selfridges post H.G.S.
Selfridge & Co’s reversal of fortunes signalled a move from its circling competitors…rival department chain John Lewis & Partners acquired some of Selfridges’ provincial stores in the Forties, which was a preliminary move to John Lewis’ eventual takeover of the flagship Oxford Street store (1951). In turn John Lewis was itself acquired by the Sears Group in 1965. Its current owners, the Anglo-Canadian Galen Weston company bought Selfridges in 2003 for a reported £598M. Today the store name ‘Selfridges’ survives on the Oxford Street building, and in the three other regional branches in the counties (Trafford Centre and Exchange Square, both in Manchester, and the Bullring in Birmingham).
FN: Harry Selfridge from when he first arrived was perceived widely as a Trans-Atlantic “blow-in”, splashing his (and his wife’s) money around, vociferously determined to show the established home-grown retailers what a ‘superior’ type of modern department store looked like. Selfridge displayed a talent for polarising opinion…to his dazzled admirers he was “the Earl of Oxford Street”, the flashy Midwest American merchant was “as much a part of the sights as Big Ben” (as one columnist waxed lyrically), but to his detractors (including many of his competitors and much of the London press) he was merely a “vulgar American tradesman” or worse [Milwaukee Sentinel, loc.cit ; Woodhead, op.cit.].
PostScript: ‘Selfridges gets Sixties hip In 1966, Selfridges, by now under Sears Holdings boss Charles Clore, recognised the youth market with a separate outlet for young women, Miss Selfridge (forming a link back to Harry Selfridge’s traditional focus on female customers). The new store in Duke Street signalled Selfridges’ wholesale embrace of the Sixties’ fashion revolution. Miss Selfridge used mannequins based on the straight line form of 1960s iconic model Twiggy and sold the latest in Mary Quant and Pierre Cardin fashions. In the early 2000s Miss Selfridge was acquired by the Arcadia Group [‘Selfridges 7 things’, op.cit.].
“The Queen of Time” AKA Ship of Commerce Statue ▼
⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎
✱ described as “Downton Abbey with tills” [” ‘Mr Selfridge’: It’s ‘Downton Abbey’ with tills…”, The Telegraph, (Daphne Lockyer), 15-Dec-2012, www.telegraph.co.uk] ☯ the impressive Selfridge facade, personifying power and permanence, was later complimented by the addition of a decorative Art-Deco motif – the ‘Queen of Time riding her Ship of Commerce’ (clock-statue by Gilbert Bayes) ✜ around 12,000 visited the store to view the displayed history making French monoplane…no doubt plenty of these visitors also made spontaneous purchases while they were in Selfridge’s premises [Forbes, op.cit.] ⊟ Selfridge possibly was quite consciously also trying to make his front-line staff as unlike Harrods’ staff – who had a reputation for ‘snootiness’ and stiff formality – as he could! [Milwaukee Sentinel, loc.cit] ✧ recently the roof was again used in idiosyncratic fashion, by being turned into a “boat lake” and a “putt-putt” mini-golf course for customers ❅ in return, when protesting suffragettes smashed shops windows in Oxford Street, Selfridge’s was one of the few left unscathed ✥ other (very famous) attributed ‘Selfridgeisms’ are “the customer is always right” and “only xx shopping days till Christmas”